Earlier this summer René Rechtman, the CEO of Moonbug Entertainment, found himself in the back of a New York City taxi cab, traveling from the Bowery up to midtown. He ended up striking up a conversation with his cab driver, who he learned splits the year between New York and Nigeria, where his wife and three children live.
“I don’t know how we started chatting. I think maybe his wife called him on his mobile, and there was CoComelon in the background. I could hear the music,” Rechtman recalls. “[I remember] the joy that was created in that man’s voice when he heard, ‘oh, yeah, that’s our show.’ That smile, the amount of stories he had because his oldest was seven or eight, so growing out of CoComelon, but the two others were still in the age. You cannot describe that feeling.”
If CoComelon were a person, it would be old enough to vote. The first video was published to YouTube in September 2006, and more than 200 million subscribers and 200 billion views later, it is a juggernaut of preschool media.
But the children’s brand finds itself in the midst of an interesting moment. YouTube creators are in high demand, and it is lucky to be perhaps the first one to strike it big outside of that platform thanks to deals with the likes of Netflix and Disney.
The company is betting on a model that will keep it growing on YouTube even as it cuts deals to build a presence on other platforms.
And next year Moonbug is taking its biggest swing yet with the franchise: The CoComelon Movie, produced in partnership with NBCUniversal’s DreamWorks. It’s a bet that a short cartoon lullaby on YouTube can cement itself as a preschool franchise that will stand the test of time.
“Moonbug acquired the CoComelon brand many years ago, and it always had the ambition of developing a much broader franchise,” says Moonbug managing director of the Americas Courtney Holt. “In order for a media company to really think about franchise building, you have to think about a couple different ways that you can do that. Especially because our center of gravity started on YouTube, and while it remains on YouTube, we had to go beyond YouTube to really establish this.”
The early days of CoComelon were built around short-form videos, with musical lullabies. Simple video, albeit with recurring characters. It was enough to help it secure a streaming deal with Netflix in 2020, bringing repackaged versions of its YouTube videos to the subscription service, where it became a hit. “It was very helpful to build a brand for us, no doubt,” Rechtman recalls.
It had the views, but it wasn’t yet a franchise.
The first steps in that direction were the launch of CoComelon Lane. The Netflix-exclusive spinoff had a different format, more ambitious music, and, perhaps most importantly … the characters talked.
“We always have had bigger ambitions to be a real enduring franchise, and for us, it really started in 2023, where we released CoComelon Lane,” says Mike Katzman, the GM of the brand. “That was like okay, the kids are actually talking. You can get to know who they are, and that was a deeper way for our audience to connect.”
The series clicked, and other spinoffs followed, including the live action Melon Patch and CoComelon Playdates with Sanrio Friends (the Japanese company that owns Hello Kitty).
Next year, the flagship show will exit Netflix and move to Disney+, as that streaming platform seeks to shore up its preschool programming alongside its own programs and acquired fare like Bluey. It’s a testament to the development of the brand.
The result has been a virtuous circle: The success of the original series and its spinoffs has provided ample data to Moonbug, which has refined and honed the programming in the process.
“YouTube is an audience-centric model, you get immediate feedback,” says Holt. “so a lot of the learnings that we take from that feedback loop go into how we think about creativity … So how we use the characters, how their personalities show up, a lot of that is informed by the feedback that we’re getting from data that lives in YouTube and how we speak to parents.”
“The great thing about being digital first is we do have this like immediate connection with our audience, so we can really get these great insights and real-time responses to what’s resonating and what you know what’s working, what our audience is coming to us for, and that can really inform how we take the next step and how we build these stepping stones of other kinds of content to really service the audience as best we can,” adds Nicole Rivera, senior creative executive for CoComelon.
You can draw a straight line between the learnings Moonbug had from the YouTube and Netflix shows to the upcoming feature film.
It will focus on JJ on his first day of kindergarten, a pretty big moment for any kid or young family.
“It’s such a fraught moment for kids and parents and families, and so really exploring that dynamic and what is the story that JJ needs to go through in that moment, how can he gain independence and confidence as he’s kind of at this new stage of his life, being more independent, setting out for this big new adventure, and really matching that emotional adventure with this exciting new world,” says Rivera.
Data helped. Rechtman notes that early on in CoComelon’s life “we could see when JJ was in focus in the episode, it was performing extremely well,” helping to guide the executives to its future star.
“Preschool was one thing, but JJ is in the big leagues now,” says Kat Good, the film’s director. “And that experience is something older kids can relate to and see a bit of their own selves in. Even as adults, we may feel trepidation at the big transitions in life — a new job, new town, new relationship, new baby. And everyone has a story about their first day of school. It’s probably one of the most significant moments of childhood. It’s through these shared experiences and feelings that stories can connect and unite us. And I know of nothing better than to provide our family audience with an opportunity to laugh, cry and share all those big, big feelings together.”
In fact, CoComelon’s influence was even pivotal in getting Good on board with the project.
“My daughter is autistic and an auditory learner. For most of her life, she has used an iPad for learning and self-regulation,” says Good. “So, we have watched a lot of alphabet songs, nursery rhymes, and ASMR videos on YouTube in our house. She was the first to discover CoComelon. And we have heard the Finger Family song on loop more times than seems humanly possible!”
“At their core, good stories speak to something universally true about our human experience,” Good adds. “And stories for children have always spoken to a fundamental aspect of our becoming which is why I am drawn to them as a storyteller.”
Moonbug executives know that this will be a pivotal moment for the franchise, one that elevates it in a way that nothing has before. The storylines will be more complex, the emotions higher, and the music more ambitious.
Justin Tranter, the film’s executive music producer, says that the film includes songs inspired by “peak 2000s indie bands like MGMT, Passion Pit, and LCD Soundsystem.”
“I wanted to bring in some subconscious nostalgia for the parents while giving the kids fresh feelings through modern synth sounds and exciting melodies,” he says.
The goal, executives say, is to create something that the preschool set will love, the kids who grew up watching CoComelon but are a bit older would appreciate, and that parents would enjoy. No small feat.
“The movie is a big step up because it’s a way to engage with us in new ways and engage with new stories,” says Katzman. “But ultimately, I think we’re trying to create something that’s enduring and multi-generational.”
“We want to really establish on a very loud basis who we are at this moment in time, and the best way to do that is to release a product that people are going to be super impressed by, that may change some of the conversations around what it is to be a native digital brand that can develop what I would say is a global theatrical film,” says Holt.